"Beware of fainting-fits… though at the time they may be refreshing and agreeable, yet believe me: they will, in the end, if too often repeated and at improper seasons, prove destructive to your constitution."

If people in Real Life actually do faint when presented with a shocking development, it is an extremely rare occurrence. So rare that you may not have actually ever seen it anywhere but on TV or in the movies.

Fainting in fiction usually takes one or more of the following forms:

The Corset Faint: One of the oldest forms of the trope hanging around from the late unlamented days of the corset, when women were a deep breath away from being cut in twain.

While not specifically being a faint per se, the phenomenon where a delicate Southern Belle responds to a dramatic situation by declaring, "Ah do believe ah have a case a' de vapours!" serves much the same purpose as a Corset Faint. It shows the fragility and delicacy of the heroine, done purposely as a theatrical ploy by the heroine or as an excuse to remove herself from a dramatic situation.

Girly Man Faint: Occurs when a male character—usually the most cowardly member of the cast—is confronted with a nameless horror which causes him to faint dead away, sometimes letting out a little girly scream. Almost exclusively played for comedy.

Anemia Faint: An affliction which seems to strike a very high proportion of Japanese shoujo heroines, causing them to black out at inopportune times and thus, give their love interests a convenient excuse to hold them and act all manly and protective. This is also true for people who have recently been Kissed by a vampire.

Truth in Television to an extent. This is why you get an iron test when you give blood and the necessary threshold is set above what counts as anemic—you can faint while giving even if your iron is only slightly down. It's also one of the reasons why the nice folks at the donation center tell you not to do any heavy exercise for the next 12 hours.

Fake Faint: A character pretends to lose consciousness in order to create a distraction. Tends to overlap with Corset Faint above, although it can be done by anyone in just about any time period.

Pregnancy Faint: A slightly more dramatic way than Morning Sickness to indicate that a female character is now expecting. In real life, fainting while pregnant falls under the medical realm of syncope, as the baby is taking the blood that the pregnant person's brain needs. It is also very rare. (Dizziness is more common)

The Monster Faint: Refers to a special subset of fainting that is rarely played straight these days, but was a big staple of '50s era monster/alien movies. A young, nubile heroine sees a hideous monster (or alien or gorilla) coming towards her and she faints, usually into the approaching monster/alien/gorilla's arms. Whereas in real life, faints last only a few seconds, the Monster Faint can last several minutes, or even several hours, if the plot dictates it. The "monster carrying an unconscious girl" motif was so popular during the '50s pulp movie era that movie posters would frequently feature a monstrous creature carrying a girl, even if no such scene appeared in the movie.

Emotional Faint: When done well, this one can be thoroughly justified—in times of extreme high emotion, people do faint. However, such extreme levels of emotion that would make it realistic are actually fairly rare. This is also the reason that Breaking Bad News Gently involves the phrase "You better sit down".

The fact that she's not wearing a corset in the latter instance probably has something to do with the men ignoring her. The reason cited (the heat) is less-than-convincing coming from a convicted pirate/swordswoman who's spent more than her share of time in the tropics. That, and they're so focused on surviving their three-man swordfight that they continue to not notice her when she starts shouting and throwing clumps of sand.

Sleepy Hollow: In The Movie, the 'cowardly' Ichabod Crane is the hero and can't very well show true cowardice, so he tends to stick out any dangerous situation (like, say, any time the Headless Horseman shows up and makes with the headchopping) and then pass out once it's over.

Water (1985). Baxter Thwaites threatens to blow up the Spenco well using dynamite strapped to a member of the Cascaran Liberation Front. He holds a cigarette lighter to the fuse until everyone else puts down their weapons, whereupon the bomb guy promptly faints.

Literature

In The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs, King Leopold faints when he realizes that he's going to be executed as a traitor if he can't convince anyone that he's himself and not his fugitive Identical Stranger cousin. Less for comedy than as one of the repeated reminders that Leopold is not an admirable manly man like the novel's hero.

In an early episode of Stargate Atlantis, Rodney learns that the city is in danger and responds by promptly keeling over. After a brief moment of panic, his teammates are only too happy to inform him that he pulled one of these. He does it again before the end of the episode, only this time he's being heroic, and it's actually an Exhaustion Faint.

Done without the scream on multiple occasions by Mr. Humphries in Are You Being Served?, typically as a silent collapse into the arms of his coworkers.

Frank from M*A*S*H had been known to do this. Also Radar, particularly when he was around anything related to childbirth.

In The X-Files episode "The Unnatural", Dales faints away upon seeing Exley's true alien form, and then faints again (and again, and again) when the alien revives him.

In the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney case "Turnabout Sisters," Phoenix faints once he sees Mia, who is dead and is the victim in the case. It's really Maya channeling Mia for the first time. Upon waking up and seeing her once more, he faints again. Lampshaded by Mia: "'GACK?!' Is that any way to treat your boss, Nick?"

Miki seems to suffer from this quite a bit in Marmalade Boy, giving two of her potential love interests a chance to get closer to her.

Brutally parodied with Hyatt in Excel Saga, who has the tendency to die at random moments, only to get up a moment (or a week) later as if nothing happened.

Nagisa in Strawberry Panic! has fainted a few times in romantic scenes, apparently because Onee-sama Shizuma's presence is just that powerful. Usually it's only for a few seconds—just long enough to be caught by another character (who, surprisingly, is not always Shizuma), or fall to her knees but recover. However, the first time kept her out long enough to be moved from the field to her room quite some distance away, and for her roommate to have watched her for long enough for it to be creepy.

Female Ranma, in the Picolet Chardin saga of Ranma ˝. Since Madame Saint-Paul does not allow her to eat at all unless she does it "properly," she loses weight at distressingly high rate. Coupled with intense speed and dexterity training, the stress this causes on her body culminates with her fainting from starvation, just as she has finally mastered the Gourmet De Fois Gras technique. The dramatic effect is ruined when, before hitting the floor, her head smacks into a watermelon, cracking it open (the watermelon, not her head.)

Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon gives blood up for her injured friend earlier in the episode, and then faints while fighting. She fights through the pain to rescue Sailor Moon and defeat the youma alone.

Kyon: That's when Nagato, an anemic all her life suffered a seizure. As I lunged to catch her from falling to the hard linoleum floor, you came walking through the door. Taniguchi: You liar.

In Tsukihime, Shiki is a Rare Male Example, suffering from it after his backstory Near Death Incident. Like many female examples, it often serves the purpose of allowing his love interest to protect him and keep him safe, and throughout the story he ends up semi-regularly collapsing from it, especially in the Far Side routes where he's getting too close to figuring out the secret behind where it comes from.

Scully in The X-Files episode "Redux" faints in a meeting with Skinner and other FBI higher-ups after her cancer progresses to a dangerous point. She was about to tell the board who the mole was working in the FBI, and as Skinner catches her before she hits the floor, she whispers "You", implying that she believes he is the mole.

Star Trek: The Original Series. When the effects of a Negative Space Wedgie causes members of the crew to start passing out, Kirk orders them given booster shots. McCoy is later shown injecting a line of Starfleet personnel— who are all female. Presumably tough spacemen are not in the habit of swooning. Or maybe they're just in a separate line being injected by Nurse Chapel?

Mio Kisaragi from Tokimeki Memorial 1 has this as one of her main traits. Suffering from anemia, she can faint at any moment. When she utters the memetic words "Memai ga..." ("I'm feeling dizzy..."), it's the signal of an impending black-out.

In Dave, the eponymous character performs one after confessing to the President's illegal actions and exonerating the Vice President, during the joint session of Congress. It works because the President (whom he had been impersonating) had suffered a stroke earlier in the movie, and this was used as a means of swapping Dave with the real coma-bound President after he chose to come clean about the President's illegal activities.

Kitty Foyle accidentally triggers the burglar alarm at the department store where she works. Realizing she's about to get fired, Kitty pretends to faint. This not only works, it also introduces her to her handsome doctor boyfriend when he tends to her.

In Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, Bill Atkinson faints loudly and dramatically during a public lecture in order to aid the lecturer's escape. It doesn't quite work, as the lecturer (and title character) faints for real seconds after.

Christine in Maskerade pulls this one whenever a play would call for the heroine to faint, usually Monster or Emotional Faint situations. Agnes notes with considerable scorn that she even falls in such a way as to avoid hurting herself when she lands.

In the Dragonlance novel Dragons of Spring Dawning, when the elven princess Laurana is threatened with rape by the Dragonarmy officer Bakaris, she pretends to faint, and then when he moves in to catch her, punches him hard in the stomach.

Casino Royale. A mook threatens to shoot James Bond with a silenced gun hidden in his cane unless he withdraws from the game, saying he'll be gone from the casino before anyone realises Bond hasn't just passed out. Instead Bond pretends to faint from the tension of the high stakes game, falling backward in his chair and knocking the weapon from the man's hands.

In Frasier, Niles pretends to faint into a man's arms in the last of a long string of attempts to stop said man from throwing Frasier out of a party before he can seal an important deal vital to Niles and Frasier's latest "Fawlty Towers" Plot.

In the Fawlty Towers episode "Gourmet Night", Basil is forced to introduce a man named "Twitchen" to another man who had a facial tic. He frantically tries to get out of it, and eventually pretends to faint for a moment.

Angel. As Cordelia is both pregnant and a Fainting Seer, she uses one of these to stop Connor leaving at a crucial moment.

In the Doctor Who story "The Monster of Peladon", Sarah Jane has Queen Thalira pretend to faint in order to distract the Ice Warrior guarding the door to the throne room.

William Shakespeare play Macbeth. Done by Lady Macbeth in an attempt to draw suspicion away from her husband. Macbeth is being asked some very awkward questions about why he killed King Duncan's supposed assassins (instead of keeping them alive so they can tell who put them up to it). Her fainting diverts the attention of the questioner, and by the time everything is sorted out the king's sons have fled and Macbeth can put the blame on them.

In Act I of The Marriage of Figaro, Susanna tries one of these, apparently to get her employer to leave her alone. Depending on the production, this may actually backfire if the Count decides to give her some air by loosening her clothes...

Princess Adora, in the pilot of She-Ra: Princess of Power, pulls off one of these to convince Skeletor and his cronies that she's a helpless, timid royal. Humiliations ensue for the poor creeps when the ruse is revealed.

Roxie Hart from Chicago faked this to attract media attention and help influence the jury in her murder trial.

Parodied in Of Thee I Sing, where President Wintergreen's impeachment proceedings are interrupted by his wife bringing the news that he's going to have a baby. He faints, and the Senators have no choice but to exonerate him, since they would never impeach an expectant father. (If you wonder how on earth a show from 1931 could parody a musical from 1975, see Adaptation Displacement.)

In The Most Happy Fella, Rosabella finds out she's pregnant after she faints during a wild dance. The doctor tells her the truth, but tells Tony that she's "just a little dizzy from all the excitement."

Played painfully straight in Uncanny X-Men issue 148, when Kitty Pryde (thirteen years old if even that at the time) faints when kidnapped by Caliban (whom we were meeting for the first time, and who was much creepier than his later appearances would make him, but still...)

Even more painful in Uncanny X-Men issue 11, where after The Stranger walks on air and through a wall, someone utters these gentlemanish words:

"Someone get a doctor! Women are faintin' like flies over here!!"

Papa Smurf collapses in a faint in The Smurfs comic book story "The Smurfs And The Book That Tells Everything" when he gets so frustrated with his little Smurfs being so dependent on the titular book that he stamps his feet in anger.

In Home with the Fairies, Maddie faints when she first sees an elf, one of an Inhumanly Beautiful Race. Before she faints, she feels "a strange preternatural sense of both awe and fear"; the elf "looks so perfect it was painful". Someone picks up Maddie and moves her to a bed, where she stays asleep until the next day.

In 1995's Casper, both sassy teenager Kat and her father, James Harvey, faint (the former from meeting the ghostly hero for the first time, and the latter when Casper's trouble making uncles pull a surprise Nightmare Face on the Dr.

In Shrek, a lady in the audience faints when Fiona reveals to Shrek that she turns into an ogre at sunset.

In Young Frankenstein, while we don't actually see Elizabeth faint when the Monster kidnaps her, he later appears carrying her unconscious body in classic movie-poster style, which leads into their Black Comedy Rape scene.

Having the narrator faint was a common way for H.P. Lovecraft to finish his stories since it saved him having to explain how his very non-Badass Normals could live to tell the tale.

In Dracula, we get a nice Gender Flip with Jonathan Harker pulling one of these fairly early on. Just as equally an emotional faint, however, as he had just been overtly harassed by three beautiful vampire-ladies andapparently his own host.

In The Phantom of the Opera, when Raoul first comes face to face with Erik in the Perros graveyard, he faints. Crosses over with an emotional faint, since Erik had already been trying to freak him out by playing the ghost and throwing skulls at him.

When the Dementors board the train in , Harry faints when they search his compartment, due to him reliving the death of his mother (he even hears her screaming). When Neville mistakenly reveals this to the Slytherns, Malfoy and his bunch try to pass it as a Frightened Faint.

Later, when the Dementors attack him during the Quidditch match, he falls from his broom.

He also faints when trying to defend his godfather, Sirius Black, from them, and casts his first Patronum spell to ward them off.

The Wandering Inn: When Jelaqua Ivirith, a Selphid, which are basically parasites that inhabit dead bodies, literally opens her stomach to show Erin her true from that is located in that region— Erin faints, when she sees Jelequa waving to her, inside of...well, Jelequa.

The X-Files. Although Agent Scully is hardly the frail heroine, even she keels over when a ghost removes his hat to reveal a large shotgun hole through his head. Also played for laughs in "The Unnatural" when the cop protagonist in 1947 Roswell sees a Grey alien (who's been posing as a Negro baseball player) for the first time. The alien keeps trying to wake him up to explain things, but as soon as the cop does so he passes out again.

Multiple

In nearly every version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, April O'Neil does this on her first sight of the turtles, whereupon they pick her up and take her home. In a possible Running Gag, Michelangelo asks "Can we keep her?" in both the first movie and the second series just after she faints.

In the first movie, April did not faint upon seeing the Turtles for the first time—her unconsciousness was due to being attacked by the Foot Clan before they got their ever-loving asses kicked by Raph. When she woke up in the sewer den, she freaked out instead, which ended up freaking the Turtles out as well.

Splinter elicited a fainting reaction from Keno and Kenshin in the second and third movies, the latter being lampshaded.

In Please Twins!, Karen fainting at any surprise or stress is a running gag, though like many such things, it tapers off as the series goes on. Becomes a bit less amusing when you consider the parent series, Please Teacher!, which had a condition called Standstill, in which a person can spend years in a coma-like condition (without aging) after too much extreme emotion. One of these days, Karen might not wake up for a long time...

Emma of Victorian Romance Emma faints at a ball, partly because her corset is laced too tightly and from seeing William with Eleanor.

Albert of Gankutsuou faints from when he accidentally drank water that was laced with poison.

In Tsukigasa, Azuma faints when Kuroe kills the robbers and it brings up trauma from when he hurt Kuroe.

Barnaby in Tiger & Bunny faints in Episode 19. With good reason, as because he's been plagued by recurring nightmares about his parents' death (which he thought he'd begun to put behind him after seemingly finding their killer), and as a result has barely eaten or slept recently. When trying to discuss his fears with Kotetsu, Barnaby breaks down in tears and then passes out.

Chapter 742 of the series proper has an example which is both serious (due to being a plot point) and hilarious: Usopp is fed the fake grape that was intended to knock Sugar out. He screams so loudly and makes such a horrifying expression that it causes Sugar to scream her lungs out in return, and she faints as a result.

Tubby does this as the end of Episode 20 of the Little Lulu anime, in response to his mother telling him that he'll be spending extra time on his violin lessons.

King Dedede has fainted in the episode "Cartoon Buffoon" not once, but twice.

Irresponsible Captain Tylor. When the ship is haunted by a ghost, Yuriko Star forces her cowardly captain to search for his first officer, whom Tylor ordered to confront the ghost because he was too scared to do so himself. Yuriko ends up fainting when she's confronted by a skeleton, much to Tylor's surprise. The ship's nurse explains that Yuriko was suppressing her fear, and the sudden shock caused all her emotions to come out at once.

In the "What Do They Fear?" Episode, Kaname is scared out of her wits by all the spooky stuff in the Abandoned Hospital she takes Souske through to try and scare him. It's revealed that all the scary things they encountered were actually tricks performed by a group of kids, who were helping out a man nicknamed Gen-san, who wanted to stay undisturbed in the hospital; he kept getting harshly picked on, so they came up with those tricks to make everyone stay away from the hospital. The kids mention, however, that the old lady Sousuke and Kaname spotted wasn't one of their tricks; Gen-san notes that she was probably the ghost of a woman who died in a fire years ago. Kaname turns blue and faints before he can even finish his sentence.

And when Sousuke tells the teacher that a lethal bacteriological weapon has been released in class, she keels over and spends the rest of the episode unconscious. Which is just as well, given all the lunacy that happens.

Death the Kid from Soul Eater has Super OCD and is absolutely obsessed with symmetry. As a result, he faints after Soul cuts a couple of centimetres off one side of his hair, as this meant it was not perfectly symmetrical any more.

He also has a complete breakdown and passes out after he erases too hard and tears his test paper.

This seems to happen any time he is not perfectly symmetrical. Liz mentions that if he tried to not use Guns Akimbo, "he'd get a Nosebleed and pass out". However, this only seems to apply to Kid himself. if he encounters an asymmetrical enemy, he's more likely to fight back with Unstoppable Rage.

In the 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed faints after seeing the corpse of a murdered woman, as it reminded him of his deceased mother, and of how she Came Back Wrong.

Comic Books

Tintin: In The Castafiore Emerald. Bianca Castafiore and her assistant Irma faint when they hear that her jewels have been stolen. In The Seven Crystal Balls Madame Yamilah is a Fainting Seer.

In Violine, Violine faints when hearing that Muller is Marushka's brother, and her "mother" is actually Marushka, her father's former governess

In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, Kyon's mother, who was until this point mentioned several times how she doesn't want Kyon to become a delinquent, faints when she is told about her son's relationship with a Yakuza family. A relationship which, ironically, she was a strong supporter.

John faints in With Strings Attached when he sees himself in the mirror for the first time and realizes that he's grown wings. He'd kind of worked himself up to it, given that he'd awakened in a strange bed, starving to death, with a growing panicky awareness that something was terribly, terribly wrong with him...

Calvin faints in Calvin and Hobbes: The Series when his dad suggests getting a pug (after he'd spent the entire episode watching over one). In addition, Hobbes (a stuffed tiger to Dad) slumps over, and the MTM shuts itself off.

Combined with Exhaustion in the (now discontinued) Star Trek fanfic And The Stars Were Shining Bright where Maddie (exhausted from no sleep, hasn't eaten in a couple of days, not to mention worried sick for her captive father) faints when she sees that the man she's contacted to kill is the same man who helped her flee a dangerous situation some fifteen months previously.

Doc Brown faints at the end of Back to the Future Part II after Marty (whom he had just sent away in the time machine) reappears behind him.

[Doc screams upon seeing Marty]Marty: Doc, calm down, okay, it's me! It's Marty! Doc: It can't be! I just sent you back to the future!Marty: I know, Doc, you did send me back to the future, but I'm back. I'm back from the future. Doc:Great... Scott![faints dead away]

Earlier on in the same movie, Marty's girlfriend Jennifer is accidentally brought into her future home. As she's about to leave, she comes across the 2015 version of herself:

In Jurassic Park, Alan Grant starts to faint upon Hammond's big reveal of living dinosaurs.

In The Notebook, Allie faints during her wedding dress fitting when she sees Noah's picture in the newspaper.

Superman. A helicopter crash almost causes Lois Lane to fall to her death. Superman makes his first public appearance by catching and saving both her and the falling helicopter. After he deposits her on the top of a building and flies away, she collapses to the ground in a dead faint.

When Jack Napier's girlfriend Alicia Hunt comes home and discovers not only that he's not dead but that he's turned into the Joker, she faints dead away.

Joker: Honey? You'll never believe what happened to me today!

The Joker goes to Vicki Vale's apartment and scares her out of her wits, including apparently killing Bruce Wayne. After the Joker leaves, Vicki Vale opens the box he left her. A hand holding a bunch of weeds pops out, and she collapses to the ground.

Men in Black. After the Bug gets into his new Edgar suit, Edgar's wife Beatrice tells him that "Your skin is hanging off your bones." The Bug pulls Edgar's face back into a horrible distorted mask and Beatrice faints dead away.

Marianne nearly faints in Sense and Sensibility when she sees that her disappeared beau, Willoughby, is with another woman at a ball. Her sister Elinor and Mrs. Jennings catch her and keep her walking.

Subverted in The Silver Chair: Jill collapses to the ground when Eustace falls off a cliff and hopes she'll faint, but the author comments it's not that easy.

Doctor Watson falls down in a dead faint when Sherlock Holmes suddenly appears in his study after having been thought dead for three years.

In The Quiller Memorandum, Quiller is faced with torture. He attempts to delay it by putting himself into syncope, through breathing heavily then holding his breath to drop his blood pressure. It's an Emotional Faint because he is under massive stress and he uses that to make his enemies believe he is weak.

In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, during the island getaway episode, the shy time-travelling Mikuru faints promptly upon seeing the stabbed body of the mansion owner, and stays out of the action for a while under Yuki's supervision, providing Haruhi and Kyon an excuse to go exploring alone together.

Dante does this in Inferno to the point where many modern readers think of it as Girly Man Fainting. His spells are usually a symptom of extreme empathy with someone he meets in Hell, as in, "Oh my God, I identify with your suffering so much I just can't stand it. * thud* "

Actually he only fainted twice in the Inferno. Once when he first enters Hell, due to a sensory overload, and another time in the circle of Lust, where he meets a couple that is the Romeo and Juliet of his time. That one was from empathy, due to his being in love with a woman from afar his whole life. (And a possible fangirl episode... they were pretty famous)

In the book Double Star the heroine faints quietly and without fuss after an intense scene which probably means the ruin of all they've been working for. Later another character reveals precautions have been taken and they're safe - whereupon she faints again. Still, given what's at stake and the extended strain she's been under it's hard to blame her.

Parodied mercilessly by Jane Austen in Love and Freindship [sic], from which the opening quote is taken.

Cathy of Team Human faints upon being reunited with the boyfriend she thought had abandoned her, but it's pointed out that she also hadn't eaten much in the past week, what with her lovestricken distress and all.

Bobbie Waterbury in The Railway Children manages to prevent a train from careening straight into a landslide via clever use of red petticoats, but has to stand on the tracks to do so. When the train finally manages to stop — just inches in front of her, as she's still standing on the tracks — she very understandably collapses in a dead faint. Jenny Agutter's rendition of the scene in the 1970 Film of the Book is iconic.

Jane Eyre: Jane faints after she finds out that Mr Rochester, who was going to marry her, already has a wife.

Christine's faint on stage during chapter 2 of The Phantom of the Opera is either this or an exhaustion type faint, since it is her first big performance.

In the stories of The Arabian Nights, this happens over and over and over and over and over again, almost always in moments of high emotion, swooning faints of love.

Red Dwarf has featured this version in a couple of episodes: Rimmer does it in "Psirens" after viewing a graphic demonstration of how and what the eponymous monsters eat, while in "Epideme" The Cat freezes up and keels over after seeing Kochanski apparently chop off her own arm. (Amusingly, in the latter case, he's just left lying on the floor, incredulous index finger still extended.)

Olive does this in the fifth episode of Pushing Daisies when it seems a dead horse jockey's ghost is out to kill all the other jockey's from that race, which includes her. Justified-ish in that Pushing Daisies never pretended to be realistic medically or otherwise - later the "dead," jockey shows up really tall, because he was paralyzed so the doctors cut off his dead horse's legs and put them on him.

In "Communication Problems", Basil is robbed of his gambling winnings by Mrs Richards, then she's complaining it was "ten pounds short". When a man enters the hotel carrying a vase she bought the previous day and asks Basil if he knows her. He is so immensely frustrated that even the mention of her name makes him faint. (He does get straight back up though).

At the end of "Basil the Rat", he also faints from the pressure.

On The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon tends to faint when he can't process the stimulus his brain is receiving; for example, when his hero Steven Hawking points out an arithmetic error in a paper Sheldon wrote.

Spoofed in Game of Thrones when Jon Snow (born of a noble family) tries to explain the concept of swooning to his wildling girlfriend Ygritte — needless to say she mocks the idea mercilessly, having come from a society where people have to be tough to survive.

A couple of seasons earlier, this is his sister, Sansa Stark's reaction to seeing their father, Lord Eddard, beheaded.

In one episode of Night Court Dan keels over in relief after learning that he's just been the victim of Mac's elaborate prank, and hasn't literally sold his soul to the devil.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When her werewolf boyfriend Oz is suspected of having killed someone, Willow goes to the mortuary at night to get samples from the victim. As Xander and Cordelia retch and express their disgust at what's been done to the body, Willow is completely focused on the task, but on finishing, faints in their arms.

In the Enemy at the Door episode "The Polish Affaire", Lady Diana Prideux faints dead away on finding an escaped prisoner hiding in her garden shed. When she recovers, it turns out that he's not just any escaped prisoner, but a man she loved and lost before the war.

A recurring gag on Raising Hope as much of the show's comedy is based on secret revelations. In particular Jimmy does this several times in the 2-part season 2 finale upon hearing ludicrously illogical news about his baby's mother.

Thoroughly justified in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard. In the course of the first act, Elsie Maynard is A. Forced to marry a condemned criminal to buy medicine to save her mother. In one of the other plots, Fairfax was framed in order that his cousin can inherit his fortune, but, by the terms of the will, he can shift the inheritance to another branch of the family if he's married, so he arranges with his guards to sort out a marriage with anyone whatsoever, for cash. B. She witnesses the highly-charged leadup to his execution by beheading, and, C. She then finds out he's escaped, meaning she, as a poor woman in Tudor times, is now permanently a criminal's wife. And being a moral woman, love is now forbidden her, because loving anyone else would be adultery. It is at this point she faints.

At the end of Act II, the jester Jack Point, who is in love with Elsie Maynard, faints because Fairfax is pardoned and is married to Elsie.

In Zone, Ciboulette faints during her interrogation when told that an American border patrol officer was killed, as she is afraid it was Tarzan who killed him.

A mainstay of opera. To name just a handful of examples:

Violetta in La Traviata, when Alfredo publically insults her (possibly justified, since she’s sick with tuberculosis).

Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier, when he realizes Baron Och’s true character (again, possibly justified, since he’s mentioned early on to be in frail health).

The title character in Rigoletto, when he realizes his daughter has been kidnapped, and again in the end, after she dies in his arms.

Leonora in Il Trovatore, when Manrico rushes off to risk his life trying to save his mother.

Santuzza and Mamma Lucia in Cavalleria Rusticana, when Turridu’s death is announced.

Miles Edgeworth loses consciousness a few times due to his extreme seismophobia. He developed a fear of earthquakes after a traumatic experience in his past that resulted in the murder of his father.

Happens twice to Ema Skye, once as she witnessed what she thought was a Serial Killer stabbing another man, and then two years later, when she realizes that she may have accidentally killed the aforementioned man.

In the sixth game's final case, Rayfa faints while trying to perform the Divination Séance to show her father Inga's final moments.

Another example from the same game is wheelchair-bound shut-in Armie Buff from Case 5, whose pyrophobia becomes a plot point during her testimony.

Jennifer, the protagonist of Rule of Rose keeps fainting at slightest provocation during the early cutscenes; they actually tend to mark the borders between chapters. But when she finds her inner courage in the last chapter, she can watch far more traumatizing sight than all the previous ones put together and keep her consciousness.

Fiona in Haunting Groundupon learning that her pursuer, Riccardo, and her father, Ugo, are clones of the game's main antagonist and that Riccardo killed her father.

Rarity faints twice during the episode "Bridle Gossip." First, when she hears that mysterious zebra Zecora's stripes are not a fashion choice, but something she was born with, and then again when the other ponies list the "horrors" of The Everfree Forest.

Rarity also faints in "A Dog and Pony Show" when Sapphire Shores asks her to make five more dresses in addition to the one she just made.

Applejack also ends up fainting in "Applebuck Season" after believing she's finished her apple-picking all by herself, only to be shown an acre that still needed to be picked. In the latter case, it's likely justified, as Applejack was suffering from severe sleep deprivation in addition to the shock, thus crossing over with the Exhaustion Faint.

Played for laughs in American Dad! when Stan outs Terry as a homosexual to his homophobic father. Terry faints into his lover's arms in the most girly way possible (practically emulating Rarity, above), and Stan, drunk off his ass, calls him out on it.

Stan: That's not how a straight guy faints. This is how a straight guy faints! [faceplants]

Used big time in the Oggy and the Cockroaches episode "Docu-Mentally", made by the same creators. After discovering Dee Dee removing the tape from his, well, video tape, he falls to the ground and passes out this way in shock. The cockroaches then proceed to film themselves playing around with Oggy's body and then send it to television. The result? Well, yeah...

Played straight in Adventure Time by Marceline of all people. She got a little...overwhelmed by the discovery that her old friend and father figure Simon had been freed from the ice-crown's curse.

In King of the Hill episode "Revenge of the Lutefisk," Bobby accidentally starts a fire which destroys the community church. He spends an entire day consumed with shame and remorse, and the next day, upon hearing an official announcement that the police are on the trail of the "arsonist," the sheer terror on top of it all drives him into a faint.

Ned's Newt: Ned does this when he finds out that the parents of a baby that he thinks will play at a New Year's pageant actually live in another town other than Friendly Falls.

Stan does this in the South Park episode "The Cissy" when his father Randy tell him that he is Lorde and proves to him that he's not making it up.

In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Krusty Dogs", Mr. Krabs takes away Krabby Patties from the Krusty Krab menu and puts hot dogs in their place. SpongeBob's reaction is to faint from shock, just as two paramedics immediately arrive and revive him. SpongeBob however faints again upon seeing Mr. Krabs take out the kitchen oven.

Horrid Henry, out of the fear of injections, faints from his brother Perfect Peter's explanation about the aforementioned injections.

Played for laughs in Pokémon when, in the episode Here Comes the Squirtle Squad, Ash keeps getting very unlucky on his way to get a super potion for Pikachu. After being barely able to walk, Ash notices the shop and as he is about to enter, Gary opens the door right in his face. He mumbles "I beg your pardon," and then faints out of exhaustion.

X-Men: Apocalypse: Professor X loses consciousness after each time he's Mind Raped by the eponymous villain. Nightcrawler passes out after he simultaneously teleports several members of the X-Men before their jet crashes.

Literature

In National Velvet, the title character faints from exhaustion after winning the climactic horse race. This is what leads to the on-site doctor examining her and discovering her true gender.

Mr. Bogus and Brattus both do this at the end of the first act of the episode "Waterboy Bogus", after a harrowing experience involving an orca.

In Disney's Cinderella, when Gus and Jaq are carrying the key up the stairs, Gus faints when he sees that there are still many more steps to go and he's already tired.

During the Animaniacs sequence "All The Words In the English Language," Yakko faints from exhaustion right before getting to the final word, but then he wakes up and says it, completing the song. He then does an Emotional Faint from shock at the very end when Dick Button announces that next time, Yakko will sing all the numbers above zero.

In the Star Trek: The Original Series fanfic Step by Step, Kirk (who is sick with the flu and has been trying to ignore it) can barely keep himself upright after Spock drags him off the bridge, and before he can get into bed, he loses consciousness. Fortunately, Spock is there to catch him.

Bohort is afraid of every animal scarier than rabbits and pheasants (including those). So after Arthur spends half an hour trying to convince him there are no wild animals in or around the camp, Leodagan shows up saying he was just taking a leak and a bear came out of the bushes, well...

Perceval once faints when Arthur, having guilt-tripped himself over his abusive treatment, speaks kindly to him.

When one episode has Perceval appearing to have become intelligent, Arthur faints.

Father Blaise faints on hearing the tritone (diabolus in musica) in person.

M*A*S*H: Attempted by one Corporal Max "I-want-outta-this-rotten-stinking-Army" Klinger after being told by Major Winchester that he'd just recently read about a man discharged from the Army for fainting. After hearing the usual symptoms preceding a faint, Klinger promptly faints. Winchester, not at all impressed, proceeded to correct Klinger by telling him that people usually fall forward when they faint. Klinger recovers, says that he was just testing, and promptly does it again.

Theatre

In La Bohčme, Mimí faints immediately after making her entrance in Act I. This serves as early foreshadowing of her fatal illness, which isn't properly revealed until Act III.

The Defenders of the Earth episode "A Demon in His Pocket" contains a scene where Mandrake is apparently taken ill on live TV, sending Lothar hurrying onto the studio floor. It turns out that there's nothing physically wrong with Mandrake, whose collapse was brought on by his sensing the presence of the demon Shogoth.

Kaeloo: In Episode 105, one of the show's animators faints when Stumpy enters the animation studio making the show and informs everyone that he is taking over the show and making his own episodes.

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